Category: Elimination Project

WOOOHOOOO, I don’t know how but we did it. I’m very pleased with the end result and the effort we all put into the finished production. The animation is very well done the voice acting is funny, despite the fact that we have some sniggering and laughter in the background and really did enjoy making it despite having some stressful issues.

What I mean is that this idea was a last minute change from a previous one that we were engaged with until realised that it was near to impossible to film by the deadline that was set. If you been following my blog post you would know that we having problems with filming the ‘Cliffhanger’ idea that we were originally going to shoot, but because we ran into issue like filming the characters on the rope and coming up with a fixed story instead of multiple ones. To be honest I think if the we didn’t have to animate with found objects like toys and stuff and it was all drawn we could of done it but with using toys we were kind of restricted with what we could do, because we had to find the right toys for the animation, we right resources for the set and also every time we had to move the characters we’d risk shifting the toys we could be really frustrating.

Overall I think if we were to film it again or attempt to make the ‘Cliffhanger’ idea, we would definitely need to make sure we plan out the entire story before we start filming, as well as think about the execution of the idea like “How we’re going film it?”, “What do we need for the set?”, or “What characters will best suit the idea?”. Plus if we want to use sound booths for voice acting and sound effects, we should book them a day in advance so we will have them to use the next day, instead of using a phone to record them…. you know…. better quality.

Anyway here’s the final animation for the ‘Elimination’ Project….. ‘Off the Desk!”

So after changing our idea, stopped crying in our sleep and because of the MAN that are Matt for managing to capture three quarters of the animation and Max for making an awesomely detailed storyboard, we’ve managed to catch up and surprisingly almost finished.

We only have to capture the final scenes and also re-shoot some of the scenes, because of the scenes were captured in landscape instead of portrait which isn’t a big deal but it does need to be sorted unless we want frames some of the frames to be stretched and once this done we can finish the editing and get it submitted with the storyboard and Stills.

After some thoughts, tests and discussions with the team with have decided that the ‘Cliffhanger’ idea was a bit of an impossible task at this point in time.

What we mean by this is that we had all these cool ideas that we wanted to put into the animation and we’re kind of got distracted with them that we didn’t really put much thought into the execution process of how will we get this done with in 3 weeks. At one point we couldn’t decide on a concrete story and instead had several ideas of how the story should unfold which delayed the filming process, we didn’t think how we could show the characters dangling from the cliff so when tried testing this we couldn’t get the characters to keep still, plus we didn’t even have a set prepared so we resulted into using two pieces of cardboard as a set which looked very lazy. I have other thoughts about the changing of the idea but I’ll leave them for my evaluation.

So after sitting in my chair for 10 minutes crying on the inside, we decided to come up with a quick and easy idea to submit for the elimination project that can and will be done.

The idea will be a chase scene (cliché I know so shut up) where we have 2 toys chasing another within a persons room, who will eventually catch the 3rd and then Toy 1 and 2 will throw 3 off a table with ease, but then the owner of the toys will pick up 3 and place him/her pack on the table, ending the film. The animation is a bit dry but at this point in time we just need to get something filmed, edited and uploaded.

We plan to get some/half of the filming done today and finish it off tomorrow, add the edits from TV paint and Photoshop sorted tomorrow then on Friday will be editing the video for its submission. Once that’s done evaluate the project, go home, fall on my bed and never wake up again (not literally I hope).

So whilst I was doing some research my good friend Max showed this animation from the Cyanide and Happiness show.

Now although this animation was pretty fun to watch, I realized that this animation was essentially our ‘Elimination’ idea only longer and 2D animated. This would bum me out and make me realize I’m not original at all, but it kind of gives us a template of what to show within our animation.

What I mean is that we could use some of the cinematography of the animation and use it in ‘Elimination’ for example whenever the scene focuses on one character, the camera would only show that character, or when we drop the character(s) we could just focus the camera on the 3 characters and then zoom out when they fall.

These are just ideas but I’m sure when it comes to the final shoots later this week we’ll know what to do.

So for my elimination project we have to use found objects for our characters. Which meant we had to take trip the toy store, and while I was envious of kids these days who get all the cooler gadgets than what I got as a kid and the never-ending FROZEN merchandise that kept on repeating the songs ‘Let it go’ and ‘Do you want to build a snowman’ (I mean come on now stop) we managed to get a Mega Bloks Spartan from ‘Halo’, a tiny minion from ‘Despicable Me’ and a Cow from ‘Minecraft’.

Although we’re pleased with our choice (I mean come on it’s a Halo Spartan how cool is that) we’re still concerned about showing the emotions that some of our characters will have, I mean when they hang off the cliff they will be terrified. Plus we still juggling ideas of how we are going show that they’re dangling from a cliff.

But thankfully Andy gave us a solution for our emotion problem. What we will do is once we have captured all the scenes we export the images and import them into TV Paint, where we can animate the faces onto the character’s faces where it’s needed, like for example have eyes pop of the Spartan’s helmet when he gets dragged off the cliff.

We’ve also done some tests with the character’s movement as we are wondering whether or not to have the characters still or moving when they walk. We ourselves want to be able to make them walk, but want to sort see if this process will prolong the time management of this animation.

After this testing we then decided that we’re going to use the bluetac that we used to help make the characters walk, but keep it simple like tilting left to right whilst moving, similar to how the characters move in “A Town Called Panic”

The feedback that we got back from the class was very useful to an extend. The reason I say “to an extend” is because some of this feedback we had already planned to add or change to our idea, but it was good to hear that we were all on the same page.

“What is the inciting event?”

I believe the inciting event for our animation will be the moment when our knife wielding character will be tension between our 2 main characters (who we will name Tom and Jerry for no reason) as they make the decision to cut Keith the cow loose. Obviously the character won’t say “HEY! Let’s cut Keith loose” because our idea involves Jerry coming up with the idea of cutting Keith loose and Tom encouraging him to do it, while Keith is no the wiser and is still just a happy cow.

I like this little 30 Second animation, the animation is very well done and it’s very simplistic, which is comforting to me because it’s something that can be very easily do if our group wanted to use sweets as characters of our animation. Plus the noises that the sweets make is really funny.

I also began to look at some PESfilm animations which are really really cool. I have to say that in each video the animation is very well done and simple, e.g. in western spaghetti it’s a simple idea of someone making spaghetti but because of the use of different random objects like tin foil to represent oil or when the Rubix was chopped up by a knife, it was dissected into smaller rubix cubes.

The last video, is a video that was recommended by Andy by an Animator called Charles Huettner. The animation looks beautiful and I really like the style of the characters. The story I think was a little slow at the beginning but it did picked after you realise that the red characters are the ghosts of people who died, and I also like when the 2 friends jump through the ghosts they witness how that person died. There’s also a bit where it shows the male friend falling while the female friend goes through another ghost, but instead of following the male, it continues the female having fun.

So yesterday we we’re introduced to the next project of the Understanding Animation module.

In this project we have to create another 30 second stop motion animation, where 2 characters have to/ try to eliminate a 3rd character. In the new group (which consists of Max and Matt) we’ve come up with a few ideas which we are currently brainstorming at the moment, we’re kind of swapping between wacky and/or serious ideas but I feel as if we’ll lean towards wacky.

“The zaniness of style matches the zaniness of story”, the words that Andy described the film “A Town Called Panic” really really really fun to watch. I enjoyed watching every second of this film mainly because of it’s wackiness, which is very relatable to myself as a person but also it’s simplicity makes more enjoyable to watch. Plus it’s also relatable to the new project as well some of the ideas that we have.

Last but not least, here’s the final edited version of our first project….. FINALLY!!! After compiling all the scenes into the correct sequence, we decided to add sound to the video as well as some fancy effects. Doing this was pretty straight forward as adding sound was just a simple drag and drop from the folder then just erase tool and the volume adjuster option until you’re happy with the result, as for the effect we decided to add some lens flares for the transition to the drawings with the scene, to act as the process of capturing. This came out really well and I think it’s one of the strongest attribute of our video.